ESEN

A tool for business owners

Your private business traffic light

Enter your numbers and review five signals about your business: margin, cash, debt, and planning and follow-up practices.

Your data · Complete the fields to see the indicators.

Step 1 · A typical month

Gather your numbers

Use the same month for sales, costs, expenses and debt payments. Estimates are welcome, but results depend on them. Do not count the same payment twice.

Amounts in US dollars (USD).

Revenue billed, excluding sales tax (IVU). This may differ from cash collected.

Merchandise, materials and direct labor included in those sales. Do not repeat these costs in operating expenses.

Payroll not included above, rent, utilities and other operating expenses. Include your salary if on payroll; exclude owner draws, depreciation, income taxes and debt payments.

Principal and interest on loans, cards and other debt used for the business. Exclude these from the fields above.

Available business funds in the bank and cash on hand. Exclude available credit, restricted funds and sales tax awaiting remittance.

Step 2 · Operating discipline

Which practices do you maintain today?

Do you close the books by the 15th of the following month?
Are business accounts separate from personal accounts?
Do you review sales, collections and payments at a weekly meeting?
Do you know the three products or services with the highest margins?
Do large purchases have an owner and an approval limit?

Step 3 · Planning and follow-up

How do you review what you expect to happen?

Do you have a budget or projection for this year?
Do you project cash for the next 13 weeks?
Do you compare actual results against projections each month?
Can the business collect and pay on time if you are away for two weeks?
Did you meet your sales or profit target in two of the last three quarters?

Your five signals

Read each indicator with its limits. They are not combined into an overall rating.

Areas to review

These possibilities are not ranked by priority. Choose what to review based on your goals, commitments and deadlines.

    How to read the references

    Thresholds are illustrative conventions for this tool, not industry standards or credit criteria: margin red < 3%, yellow from 3% to below 10%, green ≥ 10%; cash red < 4 weeks, yellow from 4 to below 8, green ≥ 8; coverage red < 1, yellow from 1 to below 1.25, green ≥ 1.25. For each five-question group: red 0–1 yes answers, yellow 2–3, green 4–5. They are not validated to predict results.

    Formulas: balance = sales − cost − operating expenses; margin = balance ÷ sales × 100; weeks = cash ÷ (operating expenses + debt) × 52 ÷ 12; coverage = balance ÷ debt. Unrounded inputs are used; results are rounded for display only.

    Explore the initial check →

    What do these signals mean for your business?

    If you choose to talk with PROA, keep your result handy and explain what you need to decide. The tool does not transfer your figures to scheduling.

    Talk with PROA

    Scheduling opens Calendly in Spanish.